Rangers, Kings likely to part with their Richards when Final ends

Cam Cole, Vancouver Sun columnist06.06.2014

Henrik Lundqvist #30 of the New York Rangers tends goal against Mike Richards #10 of the Los Angeles Kings in the first period during Game One of the 2014 NHL Stanley Cup Final at the Staples Center on June 4, 2014 in Los Angeles.Bruce Bennett
/ Getty Images

New York Rangers' Brad Richards (19) celebrates with teammates on Tuesday, April 8, 2014, in New York. It's Richards' turn to be the old hand, tutoring his young New York Rangers teammates on what it's like to win a Stanley Cup. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Frank Franklin II

Jarret Stoll #28 of the Los Angeles Kings and Brad Richards #19 of the New York Rangers get ready for a face off during Game One of the 2014 NHL Stanley Cup Final at the Staples Center on June 4, 2014 in Los Angeles.Bruce Bennett
/ Getty Images

Martin St. Louis #26 of the New York Rangers talks with Carl Hagelin #62 and Brad Richards #19 against the Montreal Canadiens during the third period in Game Two of the Eastern Conference Final during the 2014 Stanley Cup Playoffs at Bell Centre on May 19, 2014 in Montreal, Canada. (Photo by Francois Laplante/FreestylePhoto/Getty Images)

Los Angeles Kings player Mike Richards shoots the puck past Chicago Blackhawks defenceman Duncan Keith during Game 5 of the Western Conference finals Wednesday. For results of the game, which was tied at deadline, go to thestarphoenix.com.Nam Y. Huh, The Associated Press
/ The Starphoenix

Two good players, important to their teams, valued by their coaches, treasured by their teammates, loved by their fans, but carrying bloated contracts disproportionate to their on-ice contributions … so they have to go.

If it were only about an ability to help their teams win, they would stay where they are next year and the year after and the year after that.

But for two faded forwards named Richards in this Stanley Cup final --- Los Angeles Kings’ Mike and New York Rangers’ Brad --- it is about the disconnect between huge dollars and declining production in a salary-cap league.

And even though one of them is going to play a significant role in helping his team win the Cup in a week or two, it will make no difference to the bottom line: almost certainly, both will be out the door this summer.

Each will be very, very rich, and very, very hard to move without some accommodation being made --- perhaps a compliance buyout, or the current employer eating a portion of the player’s salary.

It’s a variation of the Roberto Luongo conundrum: the long-term, front-loaded deal that looked so crafty when it was signed turned into an albatross when the new collective bargaining agreement included the cap recapture clause, leaving the team that entered into the deal on the hook for whatever years and dollars are left, even if a player retires.

Brad Richards has six years remaining on the nine-year, $60 million deal he signed in 2011, so the Rangers will have to take a $6.67 million cap hit until 2020 (when he’ll be 40 years old) unless they buy him out or trade him. If they’re going to use a compliance buyout on him, it has to happen before the end of this month.

Ditto the Kings, who could buy out Mike Richards, or trade him, a slightly better possibility because at 29, he might still have productive years ahead of him and because his cap hit of $5.75 million, also through 2020, might be at least somewhat tempting for another team, one that sees a more prominent role for him than that of a fourth-line centre, which has been his lot in L.A. recently.

“He hasn't had his best year yet,” says Kings coach Darryl Sutter, who disputes the characterization of Richards as a fourth-liner. “He gives us that strong leadership. He's really good with the young players. You can count on him, Mike Richards, always in a big game.”

His teammates, too, speak of the many intangibles Richards brings, but L.A. GM Dean Lombardi would have to swallow hard to continue getting dinged $5.75 million a year for intangibles.

“That player has a track record of winning and understanding what his role is. Basically he just wins,” said Sutter, who has never had any complaint from Richards about his role.

“You know why? Because Mike’s old school. He gets it.

The only reward for somebody like Mike Richards in all this is just winning. He's all set. He's won everything. It's just winning again, that's all.”

“I think it’s fair to say everyone in here understands what he does for us,” said captain Dustin Brown, of the re-deployment that occurred after the trade-deadline acquisition of Marian Gaborik, with Jeff Carter moving to centre and Richards dropping down a couple of notches.

“It allows us to play four lines, which is key this time of year, but Rick’s also a big (power play) guy and a big (penalty kill) guy and those are areas he can really make a difference on.

“He’s a top-line centre on most teams and he was a top-line centre for us, and for whatever reason, however it’s trickled down for us, he’s on the fourth line, but I think that’s what’s special about our team: we have guys that are willing to do whatever it takes, who put the team first, and that’s how we’ve always been here.”

When Brown talks about the Kings being “built for the playoffs” he is essentially describing Richards, who makes so many subtly smart plays with the puck, he is rarely a liability.

But his ice time has steadily dropped from his days in Philadelphia, when the Flyers were two wins from a Stanley Cup in 2010, to the 2012 Cup run in L.A., to today, when he’s playing the fewest minutes of any of the four centres on a Kings team that has its greatest depth at that position.

The Rangers have similar feelings about Brad Richards, who also has fallen off offensively but has taken a bigger leadership role this season, especially operating without a captain since they dealt Ryan Callahan and two first-round picks to Tampa at the deadline to get Richards’s 2004 Stanley Cup teammate, Martin St. Louis.

It’s a far cry from last year’s playoffs, when then-coach John Tortorella made Richards a healthy scratch in the Rangers’ second-round loss to the Bruins.

Like Mike Richards, who came to camp last fall in poor shape and seems to have been especially slow of foot against the swifter teams the Kings have faced this post-season, Brad Richards hadn’t kept himself fit during last year’s lockout and his play showed it.

“It was the lowest point of my career,” Richards said.

But in his exit meetings with the Rangers, he said, GM Glen Sather “said they didn’t want to buy me out. He mentioned Messier, that he’d seen this (before) ... that when he came to New York, he had some struggles and things that went on –-- it’s a different animal, and was expected to do a lot of things as a free agent, and he came back and righted the ship. He wasn’t comparing me to Mark Messier, he was just giving me an instance of: it’s happened before, don’t worry about it, you can get through this.

“It made you feel like, OK, they’re not giving up.”

Even so, despite working out harder than ever and coming back highly motivated, he had a fairly ordinary regular season --- 51 points in 82 games is nothing like the production expected from someone with his salary.

The 2004 Conn Smythe Trophy winner has been an important piece of the playoff puzzle on Alain Vigneault’s squad, playing 17 minutes a game, but with five goals and six assists, he is only fifth on the team in scoring.

The Kings, one of the league’s lowest-scoring teams in the regular season, have eight players --- seven forwards and Drew Doughty --- with more playoff points than Brad Richards, and nine with more than Mike.

If his team wins a second Stanley Cup in three years, Lombardi may be loath to part with a veteran cog in the machine. If the Rangers win for the first time in 20 years, there will be glory for all in the Big Apple, and Sather will have to rationalize dumping a 34-year-old champion.

Richards and Richards are no relation to one another. But that’s not to say they are unrelated.

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